"... we had to learn to make products the way the Japanese wanted products. We were assembling products in Singapore and sending them to Japan. And the first thing the customer saw when they opened the box was the manual, but the manual was turned the wrong way around – and the whole batch was rejected. In the United States, we’d never experienced anything like that."
My employer learned a similar lesson years ago, securing a fat citrus contract in the process. Before the Japanese buyers arrived to inspect our packing facility, management insisted that every crate on the floor be opened, and the top tier of oranges all turned stems-up. (The packers thought that management had lost its mind. Who cares about presentation of a crate of oranges?) But when the buyers arrived they selected a random box for inspection, saw the fruit arrayed neatly, and nodded their approval.
This raises my opinion of John Sculley more than it does of Jobs. Considering the obvious conflicts he's had with Jobs in the past, plus the fact that Jobs basically succeeded where he failed, this is a very gracious and (apparently) honest appraisal of his former rival's abilities.
I agree that Sculley is a class act but I think your history is a little off.
First, Sculley and Jobs were never really rivals and while Sculley did force Jobs out of Apple it was only after literally begging him to make changes (at the time the Mac was failing and just about every Apple manager was being driven crazy by Jobs). Sculley tried to bring Jobs in-line and Jobs tried to turn everyone against Sculley. At least that’s the story I’ve read from several accounts (some of which actually depict Jobs drawing an imaginary line on the floor and saying “you’re with me or you’re with him”).
Also Sculley’s run wasn’t really a failure at Apple. Even Jobs admits the original 1984 ad was more Sculley than anyone else (Sculley’s claim to fame before that was creating the “Pepsi Challenge” marketing push). After Jobs left Sculley put Jean Louise-Gassee in charge of the Mac and that’s when it really took off. Sculley’s rein did have some lows but he always managed to pull it back out (and in fact was in the middle of a plan to do so again when the board fired him). I don’t dispute the fact that Jobs is MORE successful than Sculley was but Sculley wasn’t a failure. Apple really entered a death spiral during Spindler’s rein.
I don't think Apple would be successful today without both of them in their past. Jobs' inability to be satisfied could have killed the company but Sculley's ability to build revenue gave Jobs the cash to build a small number of great products and have a few fail when he came back. In the hardware industry being a visionary is easier with a lot of cash on hand.
It seems, from the outside, like Jobs could not have succeeded as well in his second act at Apple if he had not had the tempering of his days in the wilderness at NeXT. He had to learn, just a bit, how to work with people when he didn't have an easy cashflow to lean on. He seems much more disciplined and pragmatic this time around.
I wouldn't call Sculley a former rival. More like a former student who ended up feeling that he had to fire his mentor. I don't think Sculley wanted to do it, but I seem to recall Woz saying in an interview that it was the right thing to do at the time.
I think Steve founded a hack in telling people it is not good enough.
It's highly unlikely that these guys were giving him crappy work. I think they were giving him good industry standard work, but given the type of people he selected he knew they have better stuff to give. So, he probably pre-decided that whatever was shown to him was not good enough.
It really depends on the people you hire. For some, they might get depress and want to quit[encouragement might work better for them], but for others they would take it as a challenge to do better.
Even if he thought it was brilliant on first go, I suspect he would say redo it because he figured the person could do a better job[he probably wouldn't do it all time less people caught on].
I would be fine with that if they would give me more time to compensate. Or people would learn that strategy and just give rough drafts and then give the real final some time later.
Above all else, the mentat must be a generalist, not a specialist. It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The mentat-generalist, on the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening in his universe. He must remain capable of saying: "There's no real mystery about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove wrong later, but we'll correct that when we come to it." The mentat-generalist must understand that anything which we can identify as our universe is merely a part of larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that the mentat-generalist must look. There can be no permanent catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking yourself: "Now what is this thing doing?" - The Mentat Handbook (Frank Herbert)
Great insight: "The thing that separated Steve Jobs from other people like Bill Gates - Bill was brilliant too - but Bill was never interested in great taste. He was always interested in being able to dominate a market. He would put out whatever he had to put out there to own that space. Steve would never do that. Steve believed in perfection.”
What has always interested me in this vein is the intersection between Jobs' own "Real artists ship" and his obvious and well documented details-oriented perfectionism. It seems to me the real power of Jobs intellect is in that ability to know that the product has reached some critical mass of good enough to ship (and improve later).
I think what sets Apple apart is an unshakable belief in the quality of their own products. While Blackberry etc. release a whole armada of smartphones, as if to say 'we hope variety can make up for a lack of quality,' Apple typically release one model with some minor variation, as if to say 'we tried to make the best, and we know we have, so here it is. There's no point in releasing anything else.'
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products.
It's amazing to see how some of these have been accepted as conventional wisdom in startups while others seem to be completely rejected by startups.
In particular, the whole perfectionism thing seems to be pretty much rejected. Most startups would say that it's better just to get something launched. I'm definitely not saying that's wrong. Just saying that it's interesting to hear another point of view.
In short -- Apple's focus on perfection/design (they plan on 'throwing out' 90% of their work) is hard to match for a young start-up with limited time/money/(talent).
An important distinction, though, is that with software, particularly server-side software, it's fine to get it wrong several times, as you can fix it quickly and all in one place.
The difficulty increases as you move to desktop software and it increases a LOT more as you move to hardware, obviously.
i-tunes seemingly has to have a new update and install every time I open it, so I'd question how much "perfection" goes into the releases of Appl software.
Well, there is also a difference between what should be important to a startup (just get anything out there to get some customers/revenue) versus an establish company like Apple (be perfect with our consumer products).
Perfectionism was mentioned at least three times (3. Perfectionism, 7. Sweat the details, 10. Perfection). That says a lot about Steve Jobs. I'm still amazed how the 'death grip' slipped through.
An interesting perspective, esp actually studying Italian cars.
BTW: Edison also worked in terms of systems (electric power + grid + lights), as did Mr. Birdseye (refrigerated supermarkets + trucks + frozen food). Yah, that was his actual name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Birdseye
I loved the entirety of this article. It felt really genuine like I was being told a story by my grandpa. I cannot explain it, but this article is worth being reminded of in my future.
My employer learned a similar lesson years ago, securing a fat citrus contract in the process. Before the Japanese buyers arrived to inspect our packing facility, management insisted that every crate on the floor be opened, and the top tier of oranges all turned stems-up. (The packers thought that management had lost its mind. Who cares about presentation of a crate of oranges?) But when the buyers arrived they selected a random box for inspection, saw the fruit arrayed neatly, and nodded their approval.